THE SECOND PART

THE first man who,
having enclosed a piece of ground, bethought himself of saying This is
mine, and found people simple enough to believe him, was the real
founder of civil society. From how many crimes, wars and murders, from how
many horrors and misfortunes might not any one have saved mankind, by
pulling up the stakes, or filling up the ditch, and crying to his fellows,
"Beware of listening to this impostor; you are undone if you once
forget that the fruits of the earth belong to us all, and the earth itself
to nobody." But there is great probability that things had then
already come to such a pitch, that they could no longer continue as they
were; for the idea of property depends on many prior ideas, which could
only be acquired successively, and cannot have been formed all at once in
the human mind. Mankind must have made very considerable progress, and
acquired considerable knowledge and industry which they must also have
transmitted and increased from age to age, before they arrived at this
last point of the state of nature. Let us then go farther back, and
endeavour to unify under a single point of view that slow succession of
events and discoveries in the most natural order.

Man's first feeling was that of his own existence, and his first care
that of self-preservation. The produce of the earth furnished him with all
he needed, and instinct told him how to use it. Hunger and other appetites
made him at various times experience various modes of existence; and among
these was one which urged him to propagate his species — a blind
propensity that, having nothing to do with the heart, produced a merely
animal act. The want once gratified, the two sexes knew each other no
more; and even the offspring was nothing to its mother, as soon as it
could do without her.

Such was the condition of infant man; the life of an animal limited at
first to mere sensations, and hardly profiting by the gifts nature
bestowed on him, much less capable of entertaining a thought of forcing
anything from her. But difficulties soon presented themselves, and it
became necessary to learn how to surmount them: the height of the trees,
which prevented him from gathering their fruits, the competition of other
animals desirous of the same fruits, and the ferocity of those who needed
them for their own preservation, all obliged him to apply himself to
bodily exercises. He had to be active, swift of foot, and vigorous in
fight. Natural weapons, stones and sticks, were easily found: he learnt to
surmount the obstacles of nature, to contend in case of necessity with
other animals, and to dispute for the means of subsistence even with other
men, or to indemnify himself for what he was forced to give up to a
stronger.

In proportion as the human race grew more numerous, men's cares
increased. The difference of soils, climates and seasons, must have
introduced some differences into their manner of living. Barren years,
long and sharp winters, scorching summers which parched the fruits of the
earth, must have demanded a new industry. On the seashore and the banks of
rivers, they invented the hook and line, and became fishermen and eaters
of fish. In the forests they made bows and arrows, and became huntsmen and
warriors. In cold countries they clothed themselves with the skins of the
beasts they had slain. The lightning, a volcano, or some lucky chance
acquainted them with fire, a new resource against the rigours of winter:
they next learned how to preserve this element, then how to reproduce it,
and finally how to prepare with it the flesh of animals which before they
had eaten raw.

This repeated relevance of various beings to himself, and one to
another, would naturally give rise in the human mind to the perceptions of
certain relations between them. Thus the relations which we denote by the
terms, great, small, strong, weak, swift, slow, fearful, bold, and the
like, almost insensibly compared at need, must have at length produced in
him a kind of reflection, or rather a mechanical prudence, which would
indicate to him the precautions most necessary to his security.

The new intelligence which resulted from this development increased his
superiority over other animals, by making him sensible of it. He would now
endeavour, therefore, to ensnare them, would play them a thousand tricks,
and though many of them might surpass him in swiftness or in strength,
would in time become the master of some and the scourge of others. Thus,
the first time he looked into himself, he felt the first emotion of pride;
and, at a time when he scarce knew how to distinguish the different orders
of beings, by looking upon his species as of the highest order, he
prepared the way for assuming pre-eminence as an individual.

Other men, it is true, were not then to him what they now are to us, and
he had no greater intercourse with them than with other animals; yet they
were not neglected in his observations. The conformities, which he would
in time discover between them, and between himself and his female, led him
to judge of others which were not then perceptible; and finding that they
all behaved as he himself would have done in like circumstances, he
naturally inferred that their manner of thinking and acting was altogether
in conformity with his own. This important truth, once deeply impressed on
his mind, must have induced him, from an intuitive feeling more certain
and much more rapid than any kind of reasoning, to pursue the rules of
conduct, which he had best observe towards them, for his own security and
advantage.

Taught by experience that the love of well-being is the sole motive of
human actions, he found himself in a position to distinguish the few
cases, in which mutual interest might justify him in relying upon the
assistance of his fellows; and also the still fewer cases in which a
conflict of interests might give cause to suspect them. In the former
case, he joined in the same herd with them, or at most in some kind of
loose association, that laid no restraint on its members, and lasted no
longer than the transitory occasion that formed it. In the latter case,
every one sought his own private advantage, either by open force, if he
thought himself strong enough, or by address and cunning, if he felt
himself the weaker.

In this manner, men may have insensibly acquired some gross ideas of
mutual undertakings, and of the advantages of fulfilling them: that is,
just so far as their present and apparent interest was concerned: for they
were perfect strangers to foresight, and were so far from troubling
themselves about the distant future, that they hardly thought of the
morrow. If a deer was to be taken, every one saw that, in order to
succeed, he must abide faithfully by his post: but if a hare happened to
come within the reach of any one of them, it is not to be doubted that he
pursued it without scruple, and, having seized his prey, cared very
little, if by so doing he caused his companions to miss theirs.

It is easy to understand that such intercourse would not require a
language much more refined than that of rooks or monkeys, who associate
together for much the same purpose. Inarticulate cries, plenty of gestures
and some imitative sounds, must have been for a long time the universal
language; and by the addition, in every country, of some conventional
articulate sounds (of which, as I have already intimated, the first
institution is not too easy to explain) particular languages were
produced; but these were rude and imperfect, and nearly such as are now to
be found among some savage nations.

Hurried on by the rapidity of time, by the abundance of things I have to
say, and by the almost insensible progress of things in their beginnings,
I pass over in an instant a multitude of ages; for the slower the events
were in their succession, the more rapidly may they be described.

These first advances enabled men to make others with greater rapidity.
In proportion as they grew enlightened, they grew industrious. They ceased
to fall asleep under the first tree, or in the first cave that afforded
them shelter; they invented several kinds of implements of hard and sharp
stones, which they used to dig up the earth, and to cut wood; they then
made huts out of branches, and afterwards learnt to plaster them over with
mud and clay. This was the epoch of a first revolution, which established
and distinguished families, and introduced a kind of property, in itself
the source of a thousand quarrels and conflicts. As, however, the
strongest were probably the first to build themselves huts which they felt
themselves able to defend, it may be concluded that the weak found it much
easier and safer to imitate, than to attempt to dislodge them: and of
those who were once provided with huts, none could have any inducement to
appropriate that of his neighbour; not indeed so much because it did not
belong to him, as because it could be of no use, and he could not make
himself master of it without exposing himself to a desperate battle with
the family which occupied it.

The first expansions of the human heart were the effects of a novel
situation, which united husbands and wives, fathers and children, under
one roof. The habit of living together soon gave rise to the finest
feelings known to humanity, conjugal love and paternal affection. Every
family became a little society, the more united because liberty and
reciprocal attachment were the only bonds of its union. The sexes, whose
manner of life had been hitherto the same, began now to adopt different
ways of living. The women became more sedentary, and accustomed themselves
to mind the hut and their children, while the men went abroad in search of
their common subsistence. From living a softer life, both sexes also began
to lose something of their strength and ferocity: but, if individuals
became to some extent less able to encounter wild beasts separately, they
found it, on the other hand, easier to assemble and resist in common.

The simplicity and solitude of man's life in this new condition, the
paucity of his wants, and the implements he had invented to satisfy them,
left him a great deal of leisure, which he employed to furnish himself
with many conveniences unknown to his fathers: and this was the first yoke
he inadvertently imposed on himself, and the first source of the evils he
prepared for his descendants. For, besides continuing thus to enervate
both body and mind, these conveniences lost with use almost all their
power to please, and even degenerated into real needs, till the want of
them became far more disagreeable than the possession of them had been
pleasant. Men would have been unhappy at the loss of them, though the
possession did not make them happy.

We can here see a little better how the use of speech became
established, and insensibly improved in each family, and we may form a
conjecture also concerning the manner in which various causes may have
extended and accelerated the progress of language, by making it more and
more necessary. Floods or earthquakes surrounded inhabited districts with
precipices or waters: revolutions of the globe tore off portions from the
continent, and made them islands. It is readily seen that among men thus
collected and compelled to live together, a common idiom must have arisen
much more easily than among those who still wandered through the forests
of the continent. Thus it is very possible that after their first essays
in navigation the islanders brought over the use of speech to the
continent: and it is at least very probable that communities and languages
were first established in islands, and even came to perfection there
before they were known on the mainland.

Everything now begins to change its aspect. Men, who have up to now been
roving in the woods, by taking to a more settled manner of life, come
gradually together, form separate bodies, and at length in every country
arises a distinct nation, united in character and manners, not by
regulations or laws, but by uniformity of life and food, and the common
influence of climate. Permanent neighbourhood could not fail to produce,
in time, some connection between different families. Among young people of
opposite sexes, living in neighbouring huts, the transient commerce
required by nature soon led, through mutual intercourse, to another kind
not less agreeable, and more permanent. Men began now to take the
difference between objects into account, and to make comparisons; they
acquired imperceptibly the ideas of beauty and merit, which soon gave rise
to feelings of preference. In consequence of seeing each other often, they
could not do without seeing each other constantly. A tender and pleasant
feeling insinuated itself into their souls, and the least opposition
turned it into an impetuous fury: with love arose jealousy; discord
triumphed, and human blood was sacrificed to the gentlest of all passions.

As ideas and feelings succeeded one another, and heart and head were
brought into play, men continued to lay aside their original wildness;
their private connections became every day more intimate as their limits
extended. They accustomed themselves to assemble before their huts round a
large tree; singing and dancing, the true offspring of love and leisure,
became the amusement, or rather the occupation, of men and women thus
assembled together with nothing else to do. Each one began to consider the
rest, and to wish to be considered in turn; and thus a value came to be
attached to public esteem. Whoever sang or danced best, whoever was the
handsomest, the strongest, the most dexterous, or the most eloquent, came
to be of most consideration; and this was the first step towards
inequality, and at the same time towards vice. From these first
distinctions arose on the one side vanity and contempt and on the other
shame and envy: and the fermentation caused by these new leavens ended by
producing combinations fatal to innocence and happiness.

As soon as men began to value one another, and the idea of consideration
had got a footing in the mind, every one put in his claim to it, and it
became impossible to refuse it to any with impunity. Hence arose the first
obligations of civility even among savages; and every intended injury
became an affront; because, besides the hurt which might result from it,
the party injured was certain to find in it a contempt for his person,
which was often more insupportable than the hurt itself.

Thus, as every man punished the contempt shown him by others, in
proportion to his opinion of himself, revenge became terrible, and men
bloody and cruel. This is precisely the state reached by most of the
savage nations known to us: and it is for want of having made a proper
distinction in our ideas, and see how very far they already are from the
state of nature, that so many writers have hastily concluded that man is
naturally cruel, and requires civil institutions to make him more mild;
whereas nothing is more gentle than man in his primitive state, as he is
placed by nature at an equal distance from the stupidity of brutes, and
the fatal ingenuity of civilised man. Equally confined by instinct and
reason to the sole care of guarding himself against the mischiefs which
threaten him, he is restrained by natural compassion from doing any injury
to others, and is not led to do such a thing even in return for injuries
received. For, according to the axiom of the wise Locke, There can be
no injury, where there is no property.

But it must be remarked that the society thus formed, and the relations
thus established among men, required of them qualities different from
those which they possessed from their primitive constitution. Morality
began to appear in human actions, and every one, before the institution of
law, was the only judge and avenger of the injuries done him, so that the
goodness which was suitable in the pure state of nature was no longer
proper in the new-born state of society. Punishments had to be made more
severe, as opportunities of offending became more frequent, and the dread
of vengeance had to take the place of the rigour of the law. Thus, though
men had become less patient, and their natural compassion had already
suffered some diminution, this period of expansion of the human faculties,
keeping a just mean between the indolence of the primitive state and the
petulant activity of our egoism, must have been the happiest and most
stable of epochs. The more we reflect on it, the more we shall find that
this state was the least subject to revolutions, and altogether the very
best man could experience; so that he can have departed from it only
through some fatal accident, which, for the public good, should never have
happened. The example of savages, most of whom have been found in this
state, seems to prove that men were meant to remain in it, that it is the
real youth of the world, and that all subsequent advances have been
apparently so many steps towards the perfection of the individual, but in
reality towards the decrepitude of the species.

So long as men remained content with their rustic huts, so long as they
were satisfied with clothes made of the skins of animals and sewn together
with thorns and fish-bones, adorned themselves only with feathers and
shells, and continued to paint their bodies different colours, to improve
and beautify their bows and arrows and to make with sharp-edged stones
fishing boats or clumsy musical instruments; in a word, so long as they
undertook only what a single person could accomplish, and confined
themselves to such arts as did not require the joint labour of several
hands, they lived free, healthy, honest and happy lives, so long as their
nature allowed, and as they continued to enjoy the pleasures of mutual and
independent intercourse. But from the moment one man began to stand in
need of the help of another; from the moment it appeared advantageous to
any one man to have enough provisions for two, equality disappeared,
property was introduced, work became indispensable, and vast forests
became smiling fields, which man had to water with the sweat of his brow,
and where slavery and misery were soon seen to germinate and grow up with
the crops.

Metallurgy and agriculture were the two arts which produced this great
revolution. The poets tell us it was gold and silver, but, for the
philosophers, it was iron and corn, which first civilised men, and ruined
humanity. Thus both were unknown to the savages of America, who for that
reason are still savage: the other nations also seem to have continued in
a state of barbarism while they practised only one of these arts. One of
the best reasons, perhaps, why Europe has been, if not longer, at least
more constantly and highly civilised than the rest of the world, is that
it is at once the most abundant in iron and the most fertile in corn.

It is difficult to conjecture how men first came to know and use iron;
for it is impossible to suppose they would of themselves think of digging
the ore out of the mine, and preparing it for smelting, before they knew
what would be the result. On the other hand, we have the less reason to
suppose this discovery the effect of any accidental fire, as mines are
only formed in barren places, bare of trees and plants; so that it looks
as if nature had taken pains to keep that fatal secret from us. There
remains, therefore, only the extraordinary accident of some volcano which,
by ejecting metallic substances already in fusion, suggested to the
spectators the idea of imitating the natural operation. And we must
further conceive them as possessed of uncommon courage and foresight, to
undertake so laborious a work, with so distant a prospect of drawing
advantage from it; yet these qualities are united only in minds more
advanced than we can suppose those of these first discoverers to have
been.

With regard to agriculture, the principles of it were known long before
they were put in practice; and it is indeed hardly possible that men,
constantly employed in drawing their subsistence from plants and trees,
should not readily acquire a knowledge of the means made use of by nature
for the propagation of vegetables. It was in all probability very long,
however, before their industry took that turn, either because trees, which
together with hunting and fishing afforded them food, did not require
their attention; or because they were ignorant of the use of corn, or
without instruments to cultivate it; or because they lacked foresight to
future needs; or lastily, because they were without means of preventing
others from robbing them of the fruit of their labour.

When they grew more industrious, it is natural to believe that they
began, with the help of sharp stones and pointed sticks, to cultivate a
few vegetables or roots around their huts; though it was long before they
knew how to prepare corn, or were provided with the implements necessary
for raising it in any large quantity; not to mention how essential it is,
for husbandry, to consent to immediate loss, in order to reap a future
gain — a precaution very foreign to the turn of a savage's mind; for,
as I have said, he hardly foresees in the morning what he will need at
night.

The invention of the other arts must therefore have been necessary to
compel mankind to apply themselves to agriculture. No sooner were
artificers wanted to smelt and forge iron, than others were required to
maintain them; the more hands that were employed in manufactures, the
fewer were left to provide for the common subsistence, though the number
of mouths to be furnished with food remained the same: and as some
required commodities in exchange for their iron, the rest at length
discovered the method of making iron serve for the multiplication of
commodities. By this means the arts of husbandry and agriculture were
established on the one hand, and the art of working metals and multiplying
their uses on the other.

The cultivation of the earth necessarily brought about its distribution;
and property, once recognised, gave rise to the first rules of justice;
for, to secure each man his own, it had to be possible for each to have
something. Besides, as men began to look forward to the future, and all
had something to lose, every one had reason to apprehend that reprisals
would follow any injury he might do to another. This origin is so much the
more natural, as it is impossible to conceive how property can come from
anything but manual labour: for what else can a man add to things which he
does not originally create, so as to make them his own property? It is the
husbandman's labour alone that, giving him a title to the produce of the
ground he has tilled, gives him a claim also to the land itself, at least
till harvest, and so, from year to year, a constant possession which is
easily transformed into property. When the ancients, says Grotius, gave to
Ceres the title of Legislatrix, and to a festival celebrated in her honour
the name of Thesmophoria, they meant by that that the distribution of
lands had produced a new kind of right: that is to say, the right of
property, which is different from the right deducible from the law of
nature.

In this state of affairs, equality might have been sustained, had the
talents of individuals been equal, and had, for example, the use of iron
and the consumption of commodities always exactly balanced each other;
but, as there was nothing to preserve this balance, it was soon disturbed;
the strongest did most work; the most skilful turned his labour to best
account; the most ingenious devised methods of diminishing his labour: the
husbandman wanted more iron, or the smith more corn, and, while both
laboured equally, the one gained a great deal by his work, while the other
could hardly support himself. Thus natural inequality unfolds itself
insensibly with that of combination, and the difference between men,
developed by their different circumstances, becomes more sensible and
permanent in its effects, and begins to have an influence, in the same
proportion, over the lot of individuals.

Matters once at this pitch, it is easy to imagine the rest. I shall not
detain the reader with a description of the successive invention of other
arts, the development of language, the trial and utilisation of talents,
the inequality of fortunes, the use and abuse of riches, and all the
details connected with them which the reader can easily supply for
himself. I shall confine myself to a glance at mankind in this new
situation.

Behold then all human faculties developed, memory and imagination in
full play, egoism interested, reason active, and the mind almost at the
highest point of its perfection. Behold all the natural qualities in
action, the rank and condition of every man assigned him; not merely his
share of property and his power to serve or injure others, but also his
wit, beauty, strength or skill, merit or talents: and these being the only
qualities capable of commanding respect, it soon became necessary to
possess or to affect them.

It now became the interest of men to appear what they really were not.
To be and to seem became two totally different things; and from this
distinction sprang insolent pomp and cheating trickery, with all the
numerous vices that go in their train. On the other hand, free and
independent as men were before, they were now, in consequence of a
multiplicity of new wants, brought into subjection, as it were, to all
nature, and particularly to one another; and each became in some degree a
slave even in becoming the master of other men: if rich, they stood in
need of the services of others; if poor, of their assistance; and even a
middle condition did not enable them to do without one another. Man must
now, therefore, have been perpetually employed in getting others to
interest themselves in his lot, and in making them, apparently at least,
if not really, find their advantage in promoting his own. Thus he must
have been sly and artful in his behaviour to some, and imperious and cruel
to others; being under a kind of necessity to ill-use all the persons of
whom he stood in need, when he could not frighten them into compliance,
and did not judge it his interest to be useful to them. Insatiable
ambition, the thirst of raising their respective fortunes, not so much
from real want as from the desire to surpass others, inspired all men with
a vile propensity to injure one another, and with a secret jealousy, which
is the more dangerous, as it puts on the mask of benevolence, to carry its
point with greater security. In a word, there arose rivalry and
competition on the one hand, and conflicting interests on the other,
together with a secret desire on both of profiting at the expense of
others. All these evils were the first effects of property, and the
inseparable attendants of growing inequality.

Before the invention of signs to represent riches, wealth could hardly
consist in anything but lands and cattle, the only real possessions men
can have. But, when inheritances so increased in number and extent as to
occupy the whole of the land, and to border on one another, one man could
aggrandise himself only at the expense of another; at the same time the
supernumeraries, who had been too weak or too indolent to make such
acquisitions, and had grown poor without sustaining any loss, because,
while they saw everything change around them, they remained still the
same, were obliged to receive their subsistence, or steal it, from the
rich; and this soon bred, according to their different characters,
dominion and slavery, or violence and rapine. The wealthy, on their part,
had no sooner begun to taste the pleasure of command, than they disdained
all others, and, using their old slaves to acquire new, thought of nothing
but subduing and enslaving their neighbours; like ravenous wolves, which,
having once tasted human flesh, despise every other food and thenceforth
seek only men to devour.

Thus, as the most powerful or the most miserable considered their might
or misery as a kind of right to the possessions of others, equivalent, in
their opinion, to that of property, the destruction of equality was
attended by the most terrible disorders. Usurpations by the rich, robbery
by the poor, and the unbridled passions of both, suppressed the cries of
natural compassion and the still feeble voice of justice, and filled men
with avarice, ambition and vice. Between the title of the strongest and
that of the first occupier, there arose perpetual conflicts, which never
ended but in battles and bloodshed. The new-born state of society thus
gave rise to a horrible state of war; men thus harassed and depraved were
no longer capable of retracing their steps or renouncing the fatal
acquisitions they had made, but, labouring by the abuse of the faculties
which do them honour, merely to their own confusion, brought themselves to
the brink of ruin.

It is impossible that men should not at length have reflected on so
wretched a situation, and on the calamities that overwhelmed them. The
rich, in particular, must have felt how much they suffered by a constant
state of war, of which they bore all the expense; and in which, though all
risked their lives, they alone risked their property. Besides, however
speciously they might disguise their usurpations, they knew that they were
founded on precarious and false titles; so that, if others took from them
by force what they themselves had gained by force, they would have no
reason to complain. Even those who had been enriched by their own
industry, could hardly base their proprietorship on better claims. It was
in vain to repeat, "I built this well; I gained this spot by my
industry." Who gave you your standing, it might be answered, and what
right have you to demand payment of us for doing what we never asked you
to do? Do you not know that numbers of your fellow-creatures are starving,
for want of what you have too much of? You ought to have had the express
and universal consent of mankind, before appropriating more of the common
subsistence than you needed for your own maintenance. Destitute of valid
reasons to justify and sufficient strength to defend himself, able to
crush individuals with ease, but easily crushed himself by a troop of
bandits, one against all, and incapable, on account of mutual jealousy, of
joining with his equals against numerous enemies united by the common hope
of plunder, the rich man, thus urged by necessity, conceived at length the
profoundest plan that ever entered the mind of man: this was to employ in
his favour the forces of those who attacked him, to make allies of his
adversaries, to inspire them with different maxims, and to give them other
institutions as favourable to himself as the law of nature was
unfavourable.

With this view, after having represented to his neighbours the horror of
a situation which armed every man against the rest, and made their
possessions as burdensome to them as their wants, and in which no safety
could be expected either in riches or in poverty, he readily devised
plausible arguments to make them close with his design. "Let us join,"
said he, "to guard the weak from oppression, to restrain the
ambitious, and secure to every man the possession of what belongs to him:
let us institute rules of justice and peace, to which all without
exception may be obliged to conform; rules that may in some measure make
amends for the caprices of fortune, by subjecting equally the powerful and
the weak to the observance of reciprocal obligations. Let us, in a word,
instead of turning our forces against ourselves, collect them in a supreme
power which may govern us by wise laws, protect and defend all the members
of the association, repulse their common enemies, and maintain eternal
harmony among us."

Far fewer words to this purpose would have been enough to impose on men
so barbarous and easily seduced; especially as they had too many disputes
among themselves to do without arbitrators, and too much ambition and
avarice to go long without masters. All ran headlong to their chains, in
hopes of securing their liberty; for they had just wit enough to perceive
the advantages of political institutions, without experience enough to
enable them to foresee the dangers. The most capable of foreseeing the
dangers were the very persons who expected to benefit by them; and even
the most prudent judged it not inexpedient to sacrifice one part of their
freedom to ensure the rest; as a wounded man has his arm cut off to save
the rest of his body.

Such was, or may well have been, the origin of society and law, which
bound new fetters on the poor, and gave new powers to the rich; which
irretrievably destroyed natural liberty, eternally fixed the law of
property and inequality, converted clever usurpation into unalterable
right, and, for the advantage of a few ambitious individuals, subjected
all mankind to perpetual labour, slavery and wretchedness. It is easy to
see how the establishment of one community made that of all the rest
necessary, and how, in order to make head against united forces, the rest
of mankind had to unite in turn. Societies soon multiplied and spread over
the face of the earth, till hardly a corner of the world was left in which
a man could escape the yoke, and withdraw his head from beneath the sword
which he saw perpetually hanging over him by a thread. Civil right having
thus become the common rule among the members of each community, the law
of nature maintained its place only between different communities, where,
under the name of the right of nations, it was qualified by certain tacit
conventions, in order to make commerce practicable, and serve as a
substitute for natural compassion, which lost, when applied to societies,
almost all the influence it had over individuals, and survived no longer
except in some great cosmopolitan spirits, who, breaking down the
imaginary barriers that separate different peoples, follow the example of
our Sovereign Creator, and include the whole human race in their
benevolence.

But bodies politic, remaining thus in a state of nature among
themselves, presently experienced the inconveniences which had obliged
individuals to forsake it; for this state became still more fatal to these
great bodies than it had been to the individuals of whom they were
composed. Hence arose national wars, battles, murders, and reprisals,
which shock nature and outrage reason; together with all those horrible
prejudices which class among the virtues the honour of shedding human
blood. The most distinguished men hence learned to consider cutting each
other's throats a duty; at length men massacred their fellow-creatures by
thousands without so much as knowing why, and committed more murders in a
single day's fighting, and more violent outrages in the sack of a single
town, than were committed in the state of nature during whole ages over
the whole earth. Such were the first effects which we can see to have
followed the division of mankind into different communities. But let us
return to their institutions.

I know that some writers have given other explanations of the origin of
political societies, such as the conquest of the powerful, or the
association of the weak. It is, indeed, indifferent to my argument which
of these causes we choose. That which I have just laid down, however,
appears to me the most natural for the following reasons. First: because,
in the first case, the right of conquest, being no right in itself, could
not serve as a foundation on which to build any other; the victor and the
vanquished people still remained with respect to each other in the state
of war, unless the vanquished, restored to the full possession of their
liberty, voluntarily made choice of the victor for their chief. For till
then, whatever capitulation may have been made being founded on violence,
and therefore ipso facto void, there could not have been on this
hypothesis either a real society or body politic, or any law other than
that of the strongest. Secondly: because the words strong and weak
are, in the second case, ambiguous; for during the interval between the
establishment of a right of property, or prior occupancy, and that of
political government, the meaning of these words is better expressed by
the terms rich and poor: because, in fact, before the
institution of laws, men had no other way of reducing their equals to
submission, than by attacking their goods, or making some of their own
over to them. Thirdly: because, as the poor had nothing but their freedom
to lose, it would have been in the highest degree absurd for them to
resign voluntarily the only good they still enjoyed, without getting
anything in exchange: whereas the rich having feelings, if I may so
express myself, in every part of their possessions, it was much easier to
harm them, and therefore more necessary for them to take precautions
against it; and, in short, because it is more reasonable to suppose a
thing to have been invented by those to whom it would be of service, than
by those whom it must have harmed.

Government had, in its infancy, no regular and constant form. The want
of experience and philosophy prevented men from seeing any but present
inconveniences, and they thought of providing against others only as they
presented themselves. In spite of the endeavours of the wisest
legislators, the political state remained imperfect, because it was little
more than the work of chance; and, as it had begun ill, though time
revealed its defects and suggested remedies, the original faults were
never repaired. It was continually being patched up, when the first task
should have been to get the site cleared and all the old materials
removed, as was done by Lycurgus at Sparta, if a stable and lasting
edifice was to be erected. Society consisted at first merely of a few
general conventions, which every member bound himself to observe; and for
the performance of covenants the whole body went security to each
individual. Experience only could show the weakness of such a
constitution, and how easily it might be infringed with impunity, from the
difficulty of convicting men of faults, where the public alone was to be
witness and judge: the laws could not but be eluded in many ways;
disorders and inconveniences could not but multiply continually, till it
became necessary to commit the dangerous trust of public authority to
private persons, and the care of enforcing obedience to the deliberations
of the people to the magistrate. For to say that chiefs were chosen before
the confederacy was formed, and that the administrators of the laws were
there before the laws themselves, is too absurd a supposition to consider
seriously.

It would be as unreasonable to suppose that men at first threw
themselves irretrievably and unconditionally into the arms of an absolute
master, and that the first expedient which proud and unsubdued men hit
upon for their common security was to run headlong into slavery. For what
reason, in fact, did they take to themselves superiors, if it was not in
order that they might be defended from oppression, and have protection for
their lives, liberties and properties, which are, so to speak, the
constituent elements of their being? Now, in the relations between man and
man, the worst that can happen is for one to find himself at the mercy of
another, and it would have been inconsistent with common-sense to begin by
bestowing on a chief the only things they wanted his help to preserve.
What equivalent could he offer them for so great a right? And if he had
presumed to exact it under pretext of defending them, would he not have
received the answer recorded in the fable: "What more can the enemy
do to us?" It is therefore beyond dispute, and indeed the fundamental
maxim of all political right, that people have set up chiefs to protect
their liberty, and not to enslave them. If we have a prince, said
Pliny to Trajan, it is to save ourselves from having a master.

Politicians indulge in the same sophistry about the love of liberty as
philosophers about the state of nature. They judge, by what they see, of
very different things, which they have not seen; and attribute to man a
natural propensity to servitude, because the slaves within their
observation are seen to bear the yoke with patience; they fail to reflect
that it is with liberty as with innocence and virtue; the value is known
only to those who possess them, and the taste for them is forfeited when
they are forfeited themselves. "I know the charms of your country,"
said Brasidas to a satrap, who was comparing the life at Sparta with that
at Persepolis, "but you cannot know the pleasures of mine."

An unbroken horse erects his mane, paws the ground and starts back
impetuously at the sight of the bridle; while one which is properly
trained suffers patiently even whip and spur: so savage man will not bend
his neck to the yoke to which civilised man submits without a murmur, but
prefers the most turbulent state of liberty to the most peaceful slavery.
We cannot therefore, from the servility of nations already enslaved, judge
of the natural disposition of mankind for or against slavery; we should go
by the prodigious efforts of every free people to save itself from
oppression. I know that the former are for ever holding forth in praise of
the tranquillity they enjoy in their chains, and that they call a state of
wretched servitude a state of peace: miserrimam servitutem pacem
appellant.6 But when I observe
the latter sacrificing pleasure, peace, wealth, power and life itself to
the preservation of that one treasure, which is so disdained by those who
have lost it; when I see free-born animals dash their brains out against
the bars of their cage, from an innate impatience of captivity; when I
behold numbers of naked savages, that despise European pleasures, braving
hunger, fire, the sword and death, to preserve nothing but their
independence, I feel that it is not for slaves to argue about liberty.

With regard to paternal authority, from which some writers have derived
absolute government and all society, it is enough, without going back to
the contrary arguments of Locke and Sidney, to remark that nothing on
earth can be further from the ferocious spirit of despotism than the
mildness of that authority which looks more to the advantage of him who
obeys than to that of him who commands; that, by the law of nature, the
father is the child's master no longer than his help is necessary; that
from that time they are both equal, the son being perfectly independent of
the father, and owing him only respect and not obedience. For gratitude is
a duty which ought to be paid, but not a right to be exacted: instead of
saying that civil society is derived from paternal authority, we ought to
say rather that the latter derives its principal force from the former. No
individual was ever acknowledged as the father of many, till his sons and
daughters remained settled around him. The goods of the father, of which
he is really the master, are the ties which keep his children in
dependence, and he may bestow on them, if he pleases, no share of his
property, unless they merit it by constant deference to his will. But the
subjects of an arbitrary despot are so far from having the like favour to
expect from their chief, that they themselves and everything they possess
are his property, or at least are considered by him as such; so that they
are forced to receive, as a favour, the little of their own he is pleased
to leave them. When he despoils them, he does but justice, and mercy in
that he permits them to live.

By proceeding thus to test fact by right, we should discover as little
reason as truth in the voluntary establishment of tyranny. It would also
be no easy matter to prove the validity of a contract binding on only one
of the parties, where all the risk is on one side, and none on the other;
so that no one could suffer but he who bound himself. This hateful system
is indeed, even in modern times, very far from being that of wise and good
monarchs, and especially of the kings of France; as may be seen from
several passages in their edicts; particularly from the following passage
in a celebrated edict published in 1667 in the name and by order of Louis
XIV.

"Let it not, therefore, be said that the Sovereign is not subject
to the laws of his State; since the contrary is a true proposition of the
right of nations, which flattery has sometimes attacked but good princes
have always defended as the tutelary divinity of their dominions. How much
more legitimate is it to say with the wise Plato, that the perfect
felicity of a kingdom consists in the obedience of subjects to their
prince, and of the prince to the laws, and in the laws being just and
constantly directed to the public good!"7

I shall not stay here to inquire whether, as liberty is the noblest
faculty of man, it is not degrading our very nature, reducing ourselves to
the level of the brutes, which are mere slaves of instinct, and even an
affront to the Author of our being, to renounce without reserve the most
precious of all His gifts, and to bow to the necessity of committing all
the crimes He has forbidden, merely to gratify a mad or a cruel master; or
if this sublime craftsman ought not to be less angered at seeing His
workmanship entirely destroyed than thus dishonoured. I will waive (if my
opponents please) the authority of Barbeyrac, who, following Locke,
roundly declares that no man can so far sell his liberty as to submit to
an arbitrary power which may use him as it likes. For, he adds,
this would be to sell his own life, of which he is not master. I
shall ask only what right those who were not afraid thus to debase
themselves could have to subject their posterity to the same ignominy, and
to renounce for them those blessings which they do not owe to the
liberality of their progenitors, and without which life itself must be a
burden to all who are worthy of it.

Puffendorf says that we may divest ourselves of our liberty in favour of
other men, just as we transfer our property from one to another by
contracts and agreements. But this seems a very weak argument. For in the
first place, the property I alienate becomes quite foreign to me, nor can
I suffer from the abuse of it; but it very nearly concerns me that my
liberty should not be abused, and I cannot without incurring the guilt of
the crimes I may be compelled to commit, expose myself to become an
instrument of crime. Besides, the right of property being only a
convention of human institution, men may dispose of what they possess as
they please: but this is not the case with the essential gifts of nature,
such as life and liberty, which every man is permitted to enjoy, and of
which it is at least doubtful whether any have a right to divest
themselves. By giving up the one, we degrade our being; by giving up the
other, we do our best to annul it; and, as no temporal good can indemnify
us for the loss of either, it would be an offence against both reason and
nature to renounce them at any price whatsoever. But, even if we could
transfer our liberty, as we do our property, there would be a great
difference with regard to the children, who enjoy the father's substance
only by the transmission of his right; whereas, liberty being a gift which
they hold from nature as being men, their parents have no right whatever
to deprive them of it. As then, to establish slavery, it was necessary to
do violence to nature, so, in order to perpetuate such a right, nature
would have to be changed. Jurists, who have gravely determined that the
child of a slave comes into the world a slave, have decided, in other
words, that a man shall come into the world not a man.

I regard it then as certain, that government did not begin with
arbitrary power, but that this is the depravation, the extreme term, of
government, and brings it back, finally, to just the law of the strongest,
which it was originally designed to remedy. Supposing, however, it had
begun in this manner, such power, being in itself illegitimate, could not
have served as a basis for the laws of society, nor, consequently, for the
inequality they instituted.

Without entering at present upon the investigations which still remain
to be made into the nature of the fundamental compact underlying all
government, I content myself with adopting the common opinion concerning
it, and regard the establishment of the political body as a real contract
between the people and the chiefs chosen by them: a contract by which both
parties bind themselves to observe the laws therein expressed, which form
the ties of their union. The people having in respect of their social
relations concentrated all their wills in one, the several articles,
concerning which this will is explained, become so many fundamental laws,
obligatory on all the members of the State without exception, and one of
these articles regulates the choice and power of the magistrates appointed
to watch over the execution of the rest. This power extends to everything
which may maintain the constitution, without going so far as to alter it.
It is accompanied by honours, in order to bring the laws and their
administrators into respect. The ministers are also distinguished by
personal prerogatives, in order to recompense them for the cares and
labour which good administration involves. The magistrate, on his side,
binds himself to use the power he is entrusted with only in conformity
with the intention of his constituents, to maintain them all in the
peaceable possession of what belongs to them, and to prefer on every
occasion the public interest to his own.

Before experience had shown, or knowledge of the human heart enabled men
to foresee, the unavoidable abuses of such a constitution, it must have
appeared so much the more excellent, as those who were charged with the
care of its preservation had themselves most interest in it; for
magistracy and the rights attaching to it being based solely on the
fundamental laws, the magistrates would cease to be legitimate as soon as
these ceased to exist; the people would no longer owe them obedience; and
as not the magistrates, but the laws, are essential to the being of a
State, the members of it would regain the right to their natural liberty.

If we reflect with ever so little attention on this subject, we shall
find new arguments to confirm this truth, and be convinced from the very
nature of the contract that it cannot be irrevocable: for, if there were
no superior power capable of ensuring the fidelity of the contracting
parties, or compelling them to perform their reciprocal engagements, the
parties would be sole judges in their own cause, and each would always
have a right to renounce the contract, as soon as he found that the other
had violated its terms, or that they no longer suited his convenience. It
is upon this principle that the right of abdication may possibly be
founded. Now, if, as here, we consider only what is human in this
institution, it is certain that, if the magistrate, who has all the power
in his own hands, and appropriates to himself all the advantages of the
contract, has none the less a right to renounce his authority, the people,
who suffer for all the faults of their chief, must have a much better
right to renounce their dependence. But the terrible and innumerable
quarrels and disorders that would necessarily arise from so dangerous a
privilege, show, more than anything else, how much human government stood
in need of a more solid basis than mere reason, and how expedient it was
for the public tranquillity that the divine will should interpose to
invest the sovereign authority with a sacred and inviolable character,
which might deprive subjects of the fatal right of disposing of it. If the
world had received no other advantages from religion, this would be enough
to impose on men the duty of adopting and cultivating it, abuses and all,
since it has been the means of saving more blood than fanaticism has ever
spilt. But let us follow the thread of our hypothesis.

The different forms of government owe their origin to the differing
degrees of inequality which existed between individuals at the time of
their institution. If there happened to be any one man among them
pre-eminent in power, virtue, riches or personal influence, he became sole
magistrate, and the State assumed the form of monarchy. If several, nearly
equal in point of eminence, stood above the rest, they were elected
jointly, and formed an aristocracy. Again, among a people who had deviated
less from a state of nature, and between whose fortune or talents there
was less disproportion, the supreme administration was retained in common,
and a democracy was formed. It was discovered in process of time which of
these forms suited men the best. Some peoples remained altogether subject
to the laws; others soon came to obey their magistrates. The citizens
laboured to preserve their liberty; the subjects, irritated at seeing
others enjoying a blessing they had lost, thought only of making slaves of
their neighbours. In a word, on the one side arose riches and conquests,
and on the other happiness and virtue.

In these different governments, all the offices were at first elective;
and when the influence of wealth was out of the question, the preference
was given to merit, which gives a natural ascendancy, and to age, which is
experienced in business and deliberate in council. The Elders of the
Hebrews, the Gerontes at Sparta, the Senate at Rome, and the very
etymology of our word Seigneur, show how old age was once held in
veneration. But the more often the choice fell upon old men, the more
often elections had to be repeated, and the more they became a nuisance;
intrigues set in, factions were formed, party feeling grew bitter, civil
wars broke out; the lives of individuals were sacrificed to the pretended
happiness of the State; and at length men were on the point of relapsing
into their primitive anarchy. Ambitious chiefs profited by these
circumstances to perpetuate their offices in their own families: at the
same time the people, already used to dependence, ease, and the
conveniences of life, and already incapable of breaking its fetters,
agreed to an increase of its slavery, in order to secure its tranquillity.
Thus magistrates, having become hereditary, contracted the habit of
considering their offices as a family estate, and themselves as
proprietors of the communities of which they were at first only the
officers, of regarding their fellow-citizens as their slaves, and
numbering them, like cattle, among their belongings, and of calling
themselves the equals of the gods and kings of kings.

If we follow the progress of inequality in these various revolutions, we
shall find that the establishment of laws and of the right of property was
its first term, the institution of magistracy the second, and the
conversion of legitimate into arbitrary power the third and last; so that
the condition of rich and poor was authorised by the first period; that of
powerful and weak by the second; and only by the third that of master and
slave, which is the last degree of inequality, and the term at which all
the rest remain, when they have got so far, till the government is either
entirely dissolved by new revolutions, or brought back again to
legitimacy.

To understand this progress as necessary we must consider not so much
the motives for the establishment of the body politic, as the forms it
assumes in actuality, and the faults that necessarily attend it: for the
flaws which make social institutions necessary are the same as make the
abuse of them unavoidable. If we except Sparta, where the laws were mainly
concerned with the education of children, and where Lycurgus established
such morality as practically made laws needles — for laws as a rule,
being weaker than the passions, restrain men without altering them —
it would not be difficult to prove that every government, which
scrupulously complied with the ends for which it was instituted, and
guarded carefully against change and corruption, was set up unnecessarily.
For a country, in which no one either evaded the laws or made a bad use of
magisterial power, could require neither laws nor magistrates.

Political distinctions necessarily produce civil distinctions. The
growing equality between the chiefs and the people is soon felt by
individuals, and modified in a thousand ways according to passions,
talents and circumstances. The magistrate could not usurp any illegitimate
power, without giving distinction to the creatures with whom he must share
it. Besides, individuals only allow themselves to be oppressed so far as
they are hurried on by blind ambition, and, looking rather below than
above them, come to love authority more than independence, and submit to
slavery, that they may in turn enslave others. It is no easy matter to
reduce to obedience a man who has no ambition to command; nor would the
most adroit politician find it possible to enslave a people whose only
desire was to be independent. But inequality easily makes its way among
cowardly and ambitious minds, which are ever ready to run the risks of
fortune, and almost indifferent whether they command or obey, as it is
favourable or adverse. Thus, there must have been a time, when the eyes of
the people were so fascinated, that their rules had only to say to the
least of men, "Be great, you and all your posterity," to make
him immediately appear great in the eyes of every one as well as in his
own. His descendants took still more upon them, in proportion to their
distance from him; the more obscure and uncertain the cause, the greater
the effect: the greater the number of idlers one could count in a family,
the more illustrious it was held to be.

If this were the place to go into details, I could readily explain how,
even without the intervention of government, inequality of credit and
authority became unavoidable among private persons, as soon as their union
in a single society made them compare themselves one with another, and
take into account the differences which they found out from the continual
intercourse every man had to have with his neighbours.8
These differences are of several kinds; but riches, nobility or rank,
power and personal merit being the principal distinctions by which men
form an estimate of each other in society, I could prove that the harmony
or conflict of these different forces is the surest indication of the good
or bad constitution of a State. I could show that among these four kinds
of inequality, personal qualities being the origin of all the others,
wealth is the one to which they are all reduced in the end; for, as riches
tend most immediately to the prosperity of individuals, and are easiest to
communicate, they are used to purchase every other distinction. By this
observation we are enabled to judge pretty exactly how far a people has
departed from its primitive constitution, and of its progress towards the
extreme term of corruption. I could explain how much this universal desire
for reputation, honours and advancement, which inflames us all, exercises
and holds up to comparison our faculties and powers; how it excites and
multiplies our passions, and, by creating universal competition and
rivalry, or rather enmity, among men, occasions numberless failures,
successes and disturbances of all kinds by making so many aspirants run
the same course. I could show that it is to this desire of being talked
about, and this unremitting rage of distinguishing ourselves, that we owe
the best and the worst things we possess, both our virtues and our vices,
our science and our errors, our conquerors and our philosophers; that is
to say, a great many bad things, and a very few good ones. In a word, I
could prove that, if we have a few rich and powerful men on the pinnacle
of fortune and grandeur, while the crowd grovels in want and obscurity, it
is because the former prize what they enjoy only in so far as others are
destitute of it; and because, without changing their condition, they would
cease to be happy the moment the people ceased to be wretched.

These details alone, however, would furnish matter for a considerable
work, in which the advantages and disadvantages of every kind of
government might be weighed, as they are related to man in the state of
nature, and at the same time all the different aspects, under which
inequality has up to the present appeared, or may appear in ages yet to
come, according to the nature of the several governments, and the
alterations which time must unavoidably occasion in them, might be
demonstrated. We should then see the multitude oppressed from within, in
consequence of the very precautions it had taken to guard against foreign
tyranny. We should see oppression continually gain ground without it being
possible for the oppressed to know where it would stop, or what legitimate
means was left them of checking its progress. We should see the rights of
citizens, and the freedom of nations slowly extinguished, and the
complaints, protests and appeals of the weak treated as seditious
murmurings. We should see the honour of defending the common cause
confined by statecraft to a mercenary part of the people. We should see
taxes made necessary by such means, and the disheartened husbandman
deserting his fields even in the midst of peace, and leaving the plough to
gird on the sword. We should see fatal and capricious codes of honour
established; and the champions of their country sooner or later becoming
its enemies, and for ever holding their daggers to the breasts of their
fellow-citizens. The time would come when they would be heard saying to
the oppressor of their country —

From great inequality of fortunes and conditions, from the vast variety
of passions and of talents, of useless and pernicious arts, of vain
sciences, would arise a multitude of prejudices equally contrary to
reason, happiness and virtue. We should see the magistrates fomenting
everything that might weaken men united in society, by promoting
dissension among them; everything that might sow in it the seeds of actual
division, while it gave society the air of harmony; everything that might
inspire the different ranks of people with mutual hatred and distrust, by
setting the rights and interests of one against those of another, and so
strengthen the power which comprehended them all.

It is from the midst of this disorder and these revolutions, that
despotism, gradually raising up its hideous head and devouring everything
that remained sound and untainted in any part of the State, would at
length trample on both the laws and the people, and establish itself on
the ruins of the republic. The times which immediately preceded this last
change would be times of trouble and calamity; but at length the monster
would swallow up everything, and the people would no longer have either
chiefs or laws, but only tyrants. From this moment there would be no
question of virtue or morality; for despotism cui ex honesto nulla est
spes, wherever it prevails, admits no other master; it no sooner
speaks than probity and duty lose their weight and blind obedience is the
only virtue which slaves can still practise.

This is the last term of inequality, the extreme point that closes the
circle, and meets that from which we set out. Here all private persons
return to their first equality, because they are nothing; and, subjects
having no law but the will of their master, and their master no restraint
but his passions, all notions of good and all principles of equity again
vanish. There is here a complete return to the law of the strongest, and
so to a new state of nature, differing from that we set out from; for the
one was a state of nature in its first purity, while this is the
consequence of excessive corruption. There is so little difference between
the two states in other respects, and the contract of government is so
completely dissolved by despotism, that the despot is master only so long
as he remains the strongest; as soon as he can be expelled, he has no
right to complain of violence. The popular insurrection that ends in the
death or deposition of a Sultan is as lawful an act as those by which he
disposed, the day before, of the lives and fortunes of his subjects. As he
was maintained by force alone, it is force alone that overthrows him. Thus
everything takes place according to the natural order; and, whatever may
be the result of such frequent and precipitate revolutions, no one man has
reason to complain of the injustice of another, but only of his own
ill-fortune or indiscretion.

If the reader thus discovers and retraces the lost and forgotten road,
by which man must have passed from the state of nature to the state of
society; if he carefully restores, along with the intermediate situations
which I have just described, those which want of time has compelled me to
suppress, or my imagination has failed to suggest, he cannot fail to be
struck by the vast distance which separates the two states. It is in
tracing this slow succession that he will find the solution of a number of
problems of politics and morals, which philosophers cannot settle. He will
feel that, men being different in different ages, the reason why Diogenes
could not find a man was that he sought among his contemporaries a man of
an earlier period. He will see that Cato died with Rome and liberty,
because he did not fit the age in which he lived; the greatest of men
served only to astonish a world which he would certainly have ruled, had
he lived five hundred years sooner. In a word, he will explain how the
soul and the passions of men insensibly change their very nature; why our
wants and pleasures in the end seek new objects; and why, the original man
having vanished by degrees, society offers to us only an assembly of
artificial men and factitious passions, which are the work of all these
new relations, and without any real foundation in nature. We are taught
nothing on this subject, by reflection, that is not entirely confirmed by
observation. The savage and the civilised man differ so much in the bottom
of their hearts and in their inclinations, that what constitutes the
supreme happiness of one would reduce the other to despair. The former
breathes only peace and liberty; he desires only to live and be free from
labour; even the ataraxia of the Stoic falls far short of his
profound indifference to every other object. Civilised man, on the other
hand, is always moving, sweating, toiling and racking his brains to find
still more laborious occupations: he goes on in drudgery to his last
moment, and even seeks death to put himself in a position to live, or
renounces life to acquire immortality. He pays his court to men in power,
whom he hates, and to the wealthy, whom he despises; he stops at nothing
to have the honour of serving them; he is not ashamed to value himself on
his own meanness and their protection; and, proud of his slavery, he
speaks with disdain of those, who have not the honour of sharing it. What
a sight would the perplexing and envied labours of a European minister of
State present to the eyes of a Caribbean! How many cruel deaths would not
this indolent savage prefer to the horrors of such a life, which is seldom
even sweetened by the pleasure of doing good! But, for him to see into the
motives of all this solicitude, the words power and reputation,
would have to bear some meaning in his mind; he would have to know that
there are men who set a value on the opinion of the rest of the world; who
can be made happy and satisfied with themselves rather on the testimony of
other people than on their own. In reality, the source of all these
differences is, that the savage lives within himself, while social man
lives constantly outside himself, and only knows how to live in the
opinion of others, so that he seems to receive the consciousness of his
own existence merely from the judgment of others concerning him. It is not
to my present purpose to insist on the indifference to good and evil which
arises from this disposition, in spite of our many fine works on morality,
or to show how, everything being reduced to appearances, there is but art
and mummery in even honour, friendship, virtue, and often vice itself, of
which we at length learn the secret of boasting; to show, in short, how,
always asking others what we are, and never daring to ask ourselves, in
the midst of so much philosophy, humanity and civilisation, and of such
sublime codes of morality, we have nothing to show for ourselves but a
frivolous and deceitful appearance, honour without virtue, reason without
wisdom, and pleasure without happiness. It is sufficient that I have
proved that this is not by any means the original state of man, but that
it is merely the spirit of society, and the inequality which society
produces, that thus transform and alter all our natural inclinations.

I have endeavoured to trace the origin and progress of inequality, and
the institution and abuse of political societies, as far as these are
capable of being deduced from the nature of man merely by the light of
reason, and independently of those sacred dogmas which give the sanction
of divine right to sovereign authority. It follows from this survey that,
as there is hardly any inequality in the state of nature, all the
inequality which now prevails owes its strength and growth to the
development of our faculties and the advance of the human mind, and
becomes at last permanent and legitimate by the establishment of property
and laws. Secondly, it follows that moral inequality, authorised by
positive right alone, clashes with natural right, whenever it is not
proportionate to physical inequality; a distinction which sufficiently
determines what we ought to think of that species of inequality which
prevails in all civilised, countries; since it is plainly contrary to the
law of nature, however defined, that children should command old men,
fools wise men, and that the privileged few should gorge themselves with
superfluities, while the starving multitude are in want of the bare
necessities of life.

7. Of the Rights of the Most
Christian Queen over Various States of the Monarchy of Spain, 1667.

8. Distributive justice would oppose
this rigorous equality of the state of nature, even were it practicable in
civil society; as all the members of the State owe it their services in
proportion to their talents and abilities, they ought, on their side, to
be distinguished and favoured in proportion to the services they have
actually rendered. It is in this sense we must understand that passage of
Isocrates, in which he extols the primitive Athenians, for having
determined which of the two kinds of equality was the most useful, viz.,
that which consists in dividing the same advantages indiscriminately among
all the citizens, or that which consists in distributing them to each
according to his deserts. These able politicians, adds the orator,
banishing that unjust inequality which makes no distinction between good
and bad men, adhered inviolably to that which rewards and punishes every
man according to his deserts.

But in the first place, there never existed a society,
however corrupt some may have become, where no difference was made between
the good and the bad; and with regard to morality, where no measures can
be prescribed by law exact enough to serve as a practical rule for a
magistrate, it is with great prudence that, in order not to leave the
fortune or quality of the citizens to his discretion, it prohibits him
from passing judgment on persons and confines his judgment to actions.
Only morals such as those of the ancient Romans can bear censors, and such
a tribunal among us would throw everything into confusion. The difference
between good and bad men is determined by public esteem; the magistrate
being strictly a judge of right alone; whereas the public is the truest
judge of morals, and is of such integrity and penetration on this head,
that although it may be sometimes deceived, it can never be corrupted. The
rank of citizens ought, therefore, to be regulated, not according to their
personal merit — for this would put it in the power of the magistrate
to apply the law almost arbitrarily — but according to the actual
services done to the State, which are capable of being more exactly
estimated.